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AbstractThis study examines the impact of an imbalanced judiciary on the generation and rectification of wrongful convictions in China. Specifically, we investigate the influence of the Political and Legal Affairs Commissions (PLACs), which are tasked by the Communist Party with controlling judicial authorities. By analyzing 335 cases of wrongful convictions between 1990 and 2010, we have identified a significant relationship between the appointment of PLAC secretaries as chiefs of police and an increase in wrongful convictions. This arrangement disrupts the checks within the judicial system, leading to the prosecution of an additional 251 individuals each year in a given province. Our research reveals that in 81% of the cases examined, the correction of a wrongful conviction occurred after the secretary of the provincial PLAC, who held oversight over the court responsible for the conviction, had left office. Furthermore, even after the responsible PLAC secretaries had been replaced, if the successors were previously their subordinates, the likelihood of reversing wrongful convictions remained low. Our findings provide persuasive evidence in favour of judicial independence.

The article deals with the provisions of the procedural legislation of Ukraine, which regulates the procedure for notifying a person of suspicion of criminal proceedings. The significance of such a notification is that the consequence of its implementation is the appearance of a suspect as a subject of criminal proceedings. Issues related to the interpretation of the notion of suspicion are problematic. In Ukrainian jurisprudence, notification of suspicion is considered in two aspects: as a procedural activity and as a procedural document. Thus, it is considered as a system of procedural actions and decisions carried out by the investigator and/or prosecutor within the pre-trial investigation, the ultimate goal of which is to form a suspicion that is legitimate and reasonable. Drawing up a notification of suspicion is an activity, an important aspect of which is to assess the sufficiency of evidence to notify a person of suspicion. Since this concept is evaluative, there are difficulties in its interpretation in law enforcement. The article considers the concept of "reasonableness of suspicion", one of the criteria of which is the sufficiency of evidence. The ECHR systematic use of the notion of "reasonableness of suspicion" led to the development of a separate international standard of proof. In particular, the suspicion is justified, which relates exclusively to the act, which falls under the signs of a specific offense under the law. The second aspect concerns mainly the question of fact. The ECHR rightly notes that suspicion should be considered justified only in the actual presence of facts and information, on the basis of which the objective observer has no doubts about the possibility of committing an offense by a particular person. Both the stage of drafting and the stage of handing over the suspicion are important. Ukrainian law defines a special procedure for such service. In particular, service must be effected on the day on which the notice was drawn up. In the absence of the possibility of such ...

This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in 10 of its cities. Urban shrinkage is revealed to be a growing concern for the most populous country on earth, with the absolute number of shrinking cities rising by 71% from 164 in the 1990s to 281 in the 2000s. By developing its own definition of the city as an urban area (UA) in the Chinese political‐administrative context, this paper builds a morphologic taxonomy of China's shrinking cities. This reveals the overall net population loss across Chinese shrinking cities more than doubling since 1990, reaching 7.3 million inhabitants in 2010. Sixty‐eight Chinese UAs, mostly in north‐eastern China, are found to have been shrinking continuously since 1990. Despite the multifaceted and entangled make‐up of urban shrinkage, the paper identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China: (1) state‐incubated reindustrialisation and economic restructuring, impacting upon 63% of all shrinking UAs; (2) the country's new economic geography, with the underlying centripetal forces of agglomeration pushing around 34% of all shrinking cities towards marginalisation; (3) state‐propelled demographic change, leading to natural population decline in 26% of Chinese shrinking cities; and (4) state‐sponsored mega‐shrinkage, responsible for urban population loss in almost 20% of all the cases. This study further provides a theoretically informed reflection on the peculiarity of shrinkage in China and its public policy implications.